when multi-tabling, use bb/100 not bb/hr. then you can calculate the hrly rate by estimating how many hands/hr.

i estimate each table plays around 60 hands/hr. that'll give you 240 hands/hr four-tabling.

bb/100 * 2.4 = bb/hr, which answers most of your questions.

high stdev isn't a bad thing. more aggressive you play, higher variance you'll have. your goal to move up isn't to lower your variance. your goal is to make money. once you have enough bankroll, you can probably move upto 1/2, given you have played enough hands to determine that you're a winner at .5/1.

there's a post on risk of ruin- which i believe was posted by ed. it's a lot of math but the conclusion: if you're a winning player, starting with 400 bb at a limit will give you the risk of ruin to less than 10 percent. if you move down to the next limit, it'll be less.

you can search the forum for that article. it was a really cool article actually...